The New Face of America is Starving Children

The new face of America is not freedom or opportunity or prosperity. It is a child staring into an empty refrigerator, a mother praying her kids fall asleep before hunger begins its nightly riot in their stomachs, and an empire that funds war abroad while cutting meals at home. The same government that claims it cannot afford to feed its people has found no difficulty sending billions in military aid to Israel, even during a shutdown. Starvation for the poor, weapons for an apartheid regime. This is the moral aptitude of the United States in 2025.

And still, the billionaire class (the ones with the tax write-offs, the ones whom the law does seemingly not apply) have convinced those making $30 an hour that the REAL problem is those making $7.25 an hour. It seems that those who have everything believe they can dictate what the rest of us need. Raising the minimum wage is bad for who? Us? or Them? ‘Food is a human right’, we say, but they do not. The only two countries that veto making food a right are the United States and Israel.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed that beginning November 1, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, the only lifeline for 42 million Americans, will run dry due to the shutdown. While federal food assistance for children, single mothers, veterans, and the elderly is halted, U.S. military financing to Israel continues, uninterrupted. In America, food is not a right. It is a privilege, one more reachable if you are a foreign government aligned with U.S. militarism than if you are a poor child living in Detroit.

Those who volunteer at Food Pantries say there simply is not enough supplier either to keep up with the current demand, much less the increase soon expected. I reached out to a local Pantry in my community, and they said they are usually only able to serve about 30% of those seeking aid. They are not sure what they will do come next week.

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Under international law, food is a protected human right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25, recognizes “the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, including food.” The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Article 11, codifies “the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger.” General Comment No. 12 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights defines this right as regular, permanent, and unrestricted access to adequate and culturally appropriate food. It is binding on all signatory states.

The United States helped draft these standards but refuses to ratify the ICESCR. Successive administrations, Republican and Democrat, have rejected recognition of economic and social rights, including the right to food, on the grounds that it would require government accountability. In less diplomatic terms: Washington rejects legal obligations that interfere with the priorities of capital.

Yet this rejection does not exempt the United States from responsibility. Customary international law prohibits deliberate policies that produce hunger. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has confirmed repeatedly that states have three core duties: to respect existing access to food, protect people from corporate and third-party interference with that access, and fulfill the right to food through direct provision when people cannot feed themselves. The U.S. does the opposite. It obstructs access by cutting food stamps. It protects corporate agriculture, price-gouging, and speculation. And while it abandons the poor, it funds war abroad.

This crisis is not the product of drought, famine, or natural disaster. It is engineered by political decision-making. SNAP was never generous. The average benefit is $6.07 per day, less than what many members of Congress spend on morning coffee. But even that meager support is now cut off. Food banks across the country are already overwhelmed, reporting demand levels not seen since the pandemic. In Virginia, families are rationing canned goods. In Colorado, food banks warn they can only provide one meal for every nine meals lost by SNAP cuts. In Mississippi, hunger hotlines have crashed from call volume.

The United States has no shortage of food. It has a shortage of justice. It chooses price-gouging over regulation, agribusiness profits over child nutrition, and corporate tax breaks over human well-being. It is not a country that lacks bread. It is a country that withholds it.

At the very moment American children are being told food is “not guaranteed,” U.S. military aid to Israel continues flowing without interruption. The shutdown halted Head Start programs but not arms shipments. It froze nutrition for working families but not F-35 maintenance funding for the Israeli Air Force. With one hand, the U.S. government locks refrigerators in Ohio. With the other, it unlocks guided bombs in Gaza.

The hypocrisy is not subtle. The United States argues that food is a commodity that must obey market logic, unless it is for Israel, in which case food aid, fuel access, and military subsidies are invoked with sacred urgency. The same government that says feeding Americans during a shutdown is “fiscally irresponsible” also sends Israel billions in unconditional financing even as it stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. Evidently, moral urgency does not apply to starving children unless they further U.S. geopolitical objectives.

Starvation is not merely the absence of food. It is the presence of domination. It teaches obedience. It disciplines the desperate. It maintains hierarchy by convincing the poor that hunger is a personal failure rather than a state crime. The United States uses starvation the same way empires always have, to punish resistance and preserve order.

A country that cannot feed its people is not free. A government that chooses war over welfare is not legitimate. A political class that protects corporate greed but criminalizes poverty has no moral authority. American democracy is drowning not only in corruption, but in deliberate cruelty. The state does not have to cut food assistance. It chooses to create hunger. It chooses to subsidize death.

Meanwhile, the billionaire class lectures the working poor about “budget responsibility” as it devours tax exemptions, corporate bailouts, and subsidized luxury. The party of “family values” now tells children to go to bed hungry while celebrating billions spent on foreign occupation. The ruling elite treat food as a privilege, not a right. But rights are not begged for. They are claimed.

The right to food is more than caloric survival. It is the right to live without fear. To sit at a table with dignity. To feed your children without humiliation. To wake up tomorrow without wondering if there will be enough. When a state denies food, it denies humanity. A government that allows its own people to starve while fueling violence abroad has abandoned any claim to civilization.

The question is not whether America can afford to feed its people. The question is why its leaders refuse to.

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